Hero Worship
by trouble in my veins
Summary: They vowed to do things the right way. Post DH, Harry/Ginny.


She can feel a lie coming undone in the corners of her smile, something saying, "what have I gotten into?"

She was always stubborn, as if that wasn't apparent. She had clung to a single love her entire life. Sometimes she feels she loved Harry before she could even fathom love, before she knew him, before he came into her life, eleven-years-old with the eyes of a hero, all confusion in a striped sweater, a tiny owl and a tiny boy, holding his wand like a stick he picked up in the yard, playing war. It's a stick on the grass but in his hands, in the magic of childhood, it is a gun and it can kill ten thousand men in the name of justice and the bullets never end.

She has trouble with his name, sometimes. Harry Potter. It's familiar but not in the way it should be, not in the way her brother's best mate's name should be, in the way her fiancé's name should be. He's a hero, he's a mythical hero who saved the world twice, and many times in between. If she had a Sickle for all the times he had evaded death…

Ginny remembers stories of Voldemort, of this distant villain, growing up in a recovering world. The way her mother didn't talk about her brothers, the way she never knew her grandparents. But Bill remembers, if he only remembers a feeling of general fear, of how sometimes he and Charlie shared a room with Mum and Dad because if they were going to die they were going to die together. But Harry Potter saved them from that. Harry Potter is the reason she is alive.

It seemed funny to her that he was a little boy. It didn't seem right. She saw him very much a man in her dreams, barrel-chested and intimidating, raising his wand to duel a dark lord. His lightning scar was bright red across his forehead, his teeth were perfect and bright.

But Harry Potter was a little boy. He wore glasses and his mouth was crowded with permanent teeth his lips weren't yet sure how to cover. When his mouth was closed it was set in a natural smile. Ginny isn't quite sure when that changed, she seems to remember it as late as her fifth year, when the world was theirs for tiny windows of time where kisses lasted many years at a stretch and she thought _I am kissing Harry Potter_ and she could touch herself to sleep to the memory of removing his glasses to see his eyes.

And then he was gone.

And then she lived her life and she went to school and she did her work and she fought a war and she touched herself at night to Harry, this hero, this man she loved, as he went away and did fuck knows what and she _waited._ She waited for him to win the war, and she waited for him to come home, and she waited for him and she never let anyone touch her, she was pure for the hope of this boy who kept her waiting.

And then he came home.

And he was so silent, so shell-shocked, and the world demanded so much of him because they didn't understand and they didn't know. He slept for days at a time when he came home, on the camp bed in Ron's room, and she had no privacy anywhere because Ron and Hermione had taken up in Percy's room, exchanging fevered touches, seven years of longing rushing out in time they stole, and her room didn't feel like hers anymore. It was a little girl's room. It was the room of the girl who went to school, but it didn't belong to the woman who came home from war.

They vowed to do things the right way.

She went back to Hogwarts and he sent her owls, and he was strangely poetic, as if he was copying down words dictated by another. She was a schoolgirl in love, she rolled down her knee socks in the heat and let the sun brown her skin, and then it was winter and she was home and so was he and it was such a bashful love, they held hands and talked about the future, they felt so old, so adult. Her last year at Hogwarts and his first at the Auror Academy. She loved that she could kiss him when she wanted, that she could hold his hand and laugh with him, that there were things to laugh at, that there was dinner and pudding and tea.

They didn't talk about the war, but it was there. They didn't talk about Fred, or Colin, or Lupin and Tonks. They visited Teddy and when Harry held him it was all wrong; Ginny had to show him exactly how.

"I've never held a baby before," he said, amazed at how malleable he felt in his arms, how he could be twisted into anything. He had to run a checklist in his head. Support the head, be gentle, don't let air bubbles get in the bottle. It was strange, holding something so soft and sweet. He rarely held anything in his hands he wasn't supposed to destroy. It was strange to hold something so alive, something so oblivious, and know that it, one day, would be gone.

Ginny graduates and there is a lavish party, fairy lights and streamers in the yard. Her dress is yellow, tulle and crinoline underneath. It scratches at her legs and when she and Harry sneak away to kiss in the garden she rips it on a wooden post and thinks _Fuck it_ and tears it off. When they kiss she feels him, she is very aware that he is aware, and it isn't the first time she's felt him against her but it is the first time she is so conscious of how much she wants it, and they're both so drunk it doesn't matter and he's shoving himself against her, kissing her so hard her lips feel black and blue, he's grinding himself into her and she is only aware of how empty she is _there_, of the need to be filled, of the peculiar sensation of Harry's erection through his jeans, how warm and stiff, his breath catching and the grunts he makes when she runs her nails over his scalp and she bites his lip and her free hand has her dress pulled up as he presses into her and she pushes her panties aside and Merlin she is so _wet_, she exhales at her own touch, so familiar, a memory of how long she went without Harry. She circles herself, her touch light, and Harry smiles that little-boy smile she remembers, the smile of Harry at King's Cross seven years ago, and places his hand on top of hers and pushes so hard she bites down on his neck to keep quiet.

He can feel her wetness and it only makes it harder for him to contain himself, his fingers entwined with hers, taking her lead, touching and searching and he has seen everything, he has won a war, but he has never done this, never fought this battle, never touched her, not like this.

When he comes his hand stills and rests on her cunt, pulling out quiet waves of desire, and she moans right up against his ear, "Please."

She can feel the dampness through his jeans, right against her leg, and the feeling of it almost makes her shake, she wants to feel him, wants to feel the tension of him inside her and she says it again.

"Please."

Harry takes his hand away and the loss of his touch is painful, he is being ripped from her and all the air goes out of her lungs. He smells her on his hand, she smells of earth and time and sun and waiting, and Ginny is shocked as she watches this, watches him grow hard again in his jeans, and without removing her gaze from his, she lifts her dress, her panties at her knees, and her eyes say _Do you want this_ and she is shaking, she breathes tight small breaths and she is coming she is coming and Harry is holding himself through his trousers, rocking forward into his hand and their lips crash together and his lips are the only thing that make sense and someone is calling her name but it isn't him and that is when Ron comes running.

The mirth dies on his face and he hasn't arrived when he starts leaving.

"Mum wanted to know where you were," he says, choked by his heart throbbing somewhere in his throat. He might be sick. "Should I tell her you're here or should I give you a second to relocate?"

This isn't the story he tells at the wedding dinner. He talks about heroism but he doesn't mention the war, though maybe he should, as that's what his speech prefaces. It is the beginning of ten years. Ten years of china smashed against walls, of misdirected attention, of going to bed angry, of waking up lonely, of cold sheets and an empty bed, of torture (his), of anger (hers), of loss (theirs). Somewhere a watch counts down, ticking like a bomb in an empty room, somewhere two newlyweds kiss. Somewhere years in the future a ring is wrested from a shaking hand and dashed to the ground, a mouth is open in a long-trapped scream, a baby is born, a mouth is caught in a kiss, a hand grips a ponytail and pulls, someone asks _Are you FUCKING kidding me_, a picture is taken, two identical smiles, an owl taps at the window, two mouths part, a hand slips across skin, light-blue sheets are wrinkled and then pulled taut, an owl taps at the window, someone knocks at the door, an owl taps at the window, someone's voice is cold and low - _You saved everyone but him_, an owl taps at the window, someone offers their sincerest apologies, someone says their final goodbyes.

When they fuck it is a clashing of interest.

They've only ever touched each other, two virgins in the lamplight of an unfamiliar room, and he's clumsy and he climbs on top of her in the yellow light, their skin is young and it touches for the first time in strange new places, he enters her and it hurts both more and less than she had expected, and he comes too early and she just feels raw, he slides in and out and something inside of her twinges each time, she feels too open to him, too aware, and he kisses her again and again and he says _Thank you_ and she doesn't know what to say to him, she kisses him back and thinks _I am fucking Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived_ and she can feel it in her smile and in her skin, she is not making love, she is worshiping at his altar, she is watching him, she is experiencing his glory, she is here because she knew she would be here, she knew ten years before and she will know ten years from now that heroes cannot always win.


End file.
